Afrigather My fascination with Dennis Lee’s weird, countercultural meals writing begins with a recipe for one thing known as a Chicago-Style Hot Dog Terrine. Lee takes what seems like an empty Sara Lee pound cake tin and layers the within with all of the trimmings of a Chicago-style sizzling canine—chopped onions, sliced tomatoes, vibrant inexperienced relish, sport peppers, and pickle spears. After boiling a bundle of Vienna Beef sizzling canines and arranging them over the layers of toppings, he reserves the soiled water, provides gelatin to it, then pours the combination over the deconstructed canine. When the vessel cools, every part is suspended in a makeshift aspic. The completed product seems like an oblong loaf of translucent Jell-O made out of processed meat—it’s a traditional French dish, solely made with sizzling canine bathtub water. “The entire thing is completed off with tart mustard and grassy celery salt,” he writes, “together with the humiliation that you just simply made this terrible piece of shit.”
Lee’s anti-food-blog meals weblog, The Pizzle, the place the new canine terrine initially appeared, went viral almost a decade in the past through cooking experiments like “How to Make Puffy Cheetos At Home With Packing Peanuts” and “How to Ruin a Party: The Fart Dip Experiment.” In 2019, when he launched the Substack publication Food Is Stupid, it had the identical playfulness and joyful irreverence, however with a extra refined contact. His method stands in stark distinction to meals newsletters that search to encourage epicureans with seasonal recipes and intelligent kitchen hacks, like Sohla El-Waylly’s Hot Dish or Mark Bittman’s Heated. Lee doesn’t make weekly journeys to the greenmarket or garnish his meals with microgreens or edible flowers. His absurdist recipes, most of that are designed to fail, function frequent grocery objects and processed meals, transmogrified into unthinkable preparations—assume Froot Loops as a pizza topping or Doritos pulverized, then boiled into grits. Taste is an afterthought, if not an outright inconvenience.
Regardless of its largely inedible contents, the publication is beloved by cooks and meals writers, and browse by hundreds of curious rubberneckers desirous to bear witness to Lee’s weekly culinary prepare wrecks. “He is aware of learn how to make one thing stunning and scrumptious, however he is simply doing it with wackadoo components,” says Helen Rosner, an award-winning meals journalist for The New Yorker. “It is nearly efficiency artwork.”
Among the many many Frankenstein creations present in Meals Is Silly’s weekly dispatches are jelly bean cassoulet (a French stew made with jelly beans as a substitute of the flageolet selection), hot and Sour Patch Kids soup (Chinese language sizzling and bitter soup flavored with Bitter Patch Children sweet), Cinnamon Toast bungholes (deep fried rings of pork rectum dusted with cinnamon sugar), salmon roe boba tea (fish eggs standing in for tapioca pearls), and one thing ominously titled buffalo chicken pudding barfait (a trifle-like parfait of chicken-flavored vanilla pudding layered with spreadable Flip Whip Bleu Cheese and buffalo sauce gelatin).
Beneath the absurdity of the ranch dressing thumbprint cookies and kitty litter cornbread is biting commentary about meals traits. In response to the deluge of cacio e pepe recipes from tastemakers like Molly Baz and Alison Roman (who euphemistically calls hers “tiny creamy pasta with black pepper and pecorino”), Lee concocted probably the most ridiculous model conceivable: “Cacio e peepee.” His recipe is a perverse twist on the Roman pasta, ready in a noxious inventory made out of boiled bully sticks (a dog chew toy made from pizzle, or bull penis, and the namesake of his authentic weblog) thickened in a sauce of Kraft green-label Parmesan. “It’s good,” wrote the chef and tv host Andrew Zimmern (additionally a subscriber) to the followers of his Spilled Milk newsletter, “and an correct portrayal of the cacio e pepe insanity that’s whipsawed by our tradition lately.”
In one other heretical put up, Lee deep fries an entire recent black truffle after submerging it in an egg wash and breading it with Shake ‘N Bake. “The world is filled with uncommon delicacies,” he writes, “however consuming one thing that appears like a tumor plucked from the bottom shouldn’t be one thing you possibly can wave round in folks’s faces to make them really feel unhealthy about themselves.” Having labored in fantastic eating eating places the place cooks deal with recent truffles like buried treasure, I nearly gasped when he described dipping the crunchy truffle McNugget right into a pool of ketchup. “I believe I do it out of frustration at cooks not bringing the meals stuff right down to earth the place we are able to see it,” Lee tells me.
Meals Is Silly has a devoted following amongst restaurant business insiders regardless of its penchant for roasting them. Zoe Schor, a James Beard Award-nominated chef in Chicago, subscribes to food-related newsletters from icons like Ruth Reichl and Jeremiah Tower, however Meals Is Silly supplies her a desperately wanted breath of recent air. “I benefit from the break from my day, my relentless inbox, and all of the self-serious meals blogs which are on the market,” Schor says.
Lee’s culinary misadventures have a good time the enjoyment of failure within the kitchen. He experiments with gonzo cooking methods that skilled cooks wouldn’t dare to, like making ramen in a dishwasher by putting the noodles in a bowl on the highest rack and the spice packet within the detergent slot, tenderizing a steak by repeatedly working it over together with his Toyota Camry, and making ready frozen popcorn shrimp in a popcorn maker. “It’s traditional stunt journalism, however the factor that makes it great is that Dennis is absolutely sensible and actually humorous,” Rosner says. “You may’t faux humorous.”
Over the previous few years, Lee’s Substack has amassed an viewers of greater than 4,500 complete subscribers, leading to appearances on high-profile podcasts like The Sporkful with Dan Pashman and Chewing with Louisa Chu and Monica Eng. However the publication continues to be someplace between a labor of affection and a facet hustle: He earns nearly $20,000 a 12 months from paid subscriptions—which surpassed his expectations, however isn’t sufficient for him to surrender his day job as a correspondent overlaying extra typical food-related information for The Takeout, a meals tradition web site.
What distinguishes the content material on Meals Is Silly from at the moment’s viral rage-bait recipes like TikTok tabletop nachos and ice cream sundaes scooped into rest room bowls is Lee’s methodology. “I’d by no means consider making any of his recipes, however typically once I learn his stuff I believe, ‘This actually is sensible from a cooking standpoint,’” says Dave Park, the chef of Jeong, a Korean fantastic eating restaurant in Chicago’s West City. Lee’s legit kitchen chops—he labored in an expert pizza kitchen for 5 years—make many cooks really feel much more clued in on the joke, regardless of how outlandish his recipes get.
“Dennis is like ‘Bizarre Al’ Yankovic,” says Kenji López-Alt, a chef and writer of The Meals Lab cookbook. “Bizarre Al is technically nice. He’s a terrific musician, and he treats his songs critically, however the subject material is ridiculous.” Meals writers, who are sometimes anticipated to take meals critically for a residing, revel within the silliness. “He doesn’t get caught considering of meals as this holy, valuable factor that we’re not allowed to fuck round with,” says Rosner. “The reality is: meals is silly. Discovering freedom in that stupidity is so liberating.”
In particular person, Lee is nothing like his publication persona. He generally is a bit shy, however an occasional sinister giggle will remind you of the mad scientist lurking behind his cherubic seems and mild-mannered demeanor. His spouse Davida makes cameo appearances within the publication as a reluctant taste-tester, however lots of his mutant creations are too scary for her to pattern. Even Lee was shocked when she took a chunk of his Puppy Chow puppy chow—a riff on the Midwestern confection, which is usually made with Chex cereal tossed in peanut butter, chocolate, and powdered sugar. Lee replaces the Chex with precise Pet Chow, the pet food. He wasn’t shocked when she spit it into a close-by rubbish can inside seconds. “Often, I wait to see if he spits it out first earlier than I strive it,” she says.
Some dishes, like his crab rangoon cheesecake—a dessert made with MSG-laced imitation crabmeat, a crust of pulverized fried wonton strips, and a drizzling of bottled sweet-and-sour sauce—prove surprisingly palatable. Lee describes the flavour in facetious chef-speak: “It was savory from the MSG, just a little crabby, and had simply sufficient inexperienced onions in it in order that you might actually catch their scent.” Most weeks, he does not trouble offering recipe specs, however readers have been so intrigued with the completed product that he issued an addendum three days later with directions on learn how to make the unorthodox dessert.
After enduring a spirited monologue about his unhealthy obsession with Taco Bell—a restaurant he treats with the identical reverence that gastrophiles bestow upon Noma—I ask Lee about the way forward for the publication. With a deep, self-deprecating sigh, he expresses a want for it to turn into a sustainable, full-time pursuit. However he admits that the scatological nature of his work makes it tough to command extra mainstream consideration. “The meals media folks don’t know the place to place me,” he says, sounding a bit deflated. “I don’t match into something they’ve constructed.”
Earlier than he completes the thought, Davida interjects, locking eyes with him lovingly. “I simply hope it doesn’t kill him.”
